A Proud Day for 'Labor for Refugees'

[tcpip]

Some years ago I was quite involved in asylum seeker advocacy. I travelled to the Woomera Detention facility in mid-2001 and raised a modest sum of money from state Labor MPs for the Refugee Action Collective following the screening of The Inside Story on Four Corners. In August 2001, the Merchant Vessel Tampa, entered Australian waters full of asylum seekers. The Australian government sent SAS troops to board the increasingly unseaworthy ship which some noted at the time could be considered an act of war against Norway. The Howard government introduced a retroactive Border Protection Bill, which sought to legislate powers that the government could use force to remove any ship from Australian territorial waters, regardless of international obligations. It was in this environment I started the group, "Labor for Refugees", which grew to become an interstate, non-factional organisation which lobbied within the Party (and outside) for the abolition of mandatory detention and temporary protection visas.

Labor lost the 2001 election as the former Prime Minister John Howard knowingly lied to the Australian population claiming that the asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard in attempt to gain admission to Australia. 'Pragmatists' within the party refused to take the issue up against the lying rodent or admit the Party's culpability in introducing mandatory detention in the first place. Nevertheless the organisation persisted, through the successive leaderships of Beazley, Crean, Beazley again, Latham and Rudd, generated its share of media attention with a sea of prominent gold an black t-shirts at Labor Party national conferences and even publically supporting a federal Liberal MP for his humane stance on asylum seeker rights.

At the 2006 AGM I ended most of involvement with Labor for Refugees. The new Labor spokesperson on immigration, Tony Burke, made it clear that temporary protection visas were going to become a thing of the past. In May this year Temporary Protection Visas were abolished. Two days ago it was announced that mandatory detention would be ended.

It took over six years. But our objectives have been achieved, because we took a principled stand, we argued from the facts, and didn't give up. And that's politics for you.

Comments

[luciusmalfoy.livejournal.com]

And this is awesome. You rock.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It is great news, and a long time coming.

I was fortunate enough to be position at the right time to be able to set up the group with some effectiveness. It was also fortunate that other, pre-existing organisations in NSW and VIC saw the usefulness to unite forces as well.

Sure, I did some of the hard yards, but there was some amazing people all of the country who did more. My thanks really go out to them.

[narrelle.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your hard work in taking a lead on this over the years. It's so good to feel both proud of my country and proud of my party again.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It will come to no surprise if I tell you that the Tampa incident was a set up cooked up between the conservative media moguls and the Howard government. In many ways establishing L4R was a means to ensure that they wouldn't be able to make all the mileage they wanted out of wedge politics and to provide the opportunity for Labor party members to work on the issue within the party against the nay-sayers and racists... and yes, the ALP does have its fair share of the latter.

[narrelle.livejournal.com]

While I don't generally buy into conspiracy theories, I'll pay for that one. I am certainly aware that Labor has it's share of the whole spectrum of human madness. Disturbingly, I read your post not long after someone I work with burbled vilely for ten minutes at a colleague about how current immigrants are all murderous HIV+ crazy people who come to this country in order to kill people. Or that's what it boiled down to. Sigh. So your post was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.

[thebaronmk1.livejournal.com]

Well done :-)

You have no idea how pleases I am that we have finally gotten this far. I remember getting a lovely reply email from Petro Georgiou, whom I had written to when he was lobbying to improve the situation, telling me that he would carry on the fight, and today he has written a pretty decent piece in the Age on the subject.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Petro Georgiou is a thoroughly decent human being, one of the "true liberals", indeed to use Paul Keating's description "a true believer" in genuinely liberal values. I have the utmost respect for him.

[the-shadow298.livejournal.com]

congrats and well done to everyone involved in the campaign. ^_^

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Go you and everyone else that worked on this.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[angel80.livejournal.com]

Yes, well done! I have been reading though, that there's still a road to hoe before we have a really decent immigration policy. But this is a good step.

NEVER give up...

[khrysha.livejournal.com]

I was also involved in English programs for Afghan Hazara refugees.

It's about time this has ended. Thank goodness!!

Re: NEVER give up...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The Hazara, who really are the core of that country whose boundaries have been created by imperial interests, have been receiving the short end of human rights agenda for too long :(

Re: NEVER give up...

[khrysha.livejournal.com]

They're really amazingly lovely people.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Yay and good riddance.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Thank God! The whole Tampa business made me sick to my stomach and left me disappointed in Australia. Getting rid of mandatory detention puts them back in a place of respect where they can hopefully inspire at least shame the US into something like that direction.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I remember being asked sotto voce by some UN workers on a pier in Dili, East Timor the following year about the issue. They were genuinely confused and concerned: "What is happening in Australia?!" I tried my best to explain the situation with a range of political and cultural references, but ultimately it came down to the fact that many people simply either did not care or felt threatened - and most of the latter group were lower-middle class people from the outer suburbs; in other circumstances core Labor voters.

By the same token I don't think it will be shame that shifts US policy in such a direction. It'll take political action from normal, everyday people who are prepared to keep hammering away at the issue.

[grailchaser.livejournal.com]

That's great to hear, Lev. But I'm still not out of a job just yet. :)

Whilst I was always sceptical of the whole "Refugees Overboard" scenario and would still like to see Howard do time for his deception, many of the Refugees we had at Woomera during the early noughties did very, very desperate things whilst in detention - including endangering the lives of their own children.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, not everyone seeking asylum is an angel by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly under detention people do even worse things. Also, it is true that there was one instance (on SIEV - 7) where a child was thrown off a boat - only to be rescued by another asylum seeker.

There are many reasons why Howard should spend a day in court over the various and deliberate deceptions to the Australian people; the claim by Michael Scafton that he told Howard that the "children overboard" claim was untrue is something that comes to mind. But of course, according to the doctrine of pragmatic politics, that would only be raking over the past. :(

[grailchaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! The shame of it is that nobody in the Liberal party believes in honour in politics. So whilst Labour goes its naive way without taking their adversaries to task for lack of accountability, you can guarantee that the moment the Liberals get back in power, the Holy Inquisition will start all over again.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

Good work. I wish I could be as optimistic about our own political system.

(Then again, our immigration problems in the U. S. are perhaps of a different nature than those of Australia's. But the principles of liberty remain the same.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Without doing a great deal of investigation I rather suspect there is a great deal of similarity. We also have the additional problem that Indonesia has never signed the UN Convention of Refugees which would be a natural first point of refuge.

But, as you say, the principles of liberty remain the same. I am often amazed by that capital receives a degree of 'freedom of movement' than flesh and blood human beings!

[iosef.livejournal.com]

It's a good win, no matter how you look at it.

[mtdesing.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on seeing your hard work pay off. It has to be incredibly gratifying to see concrete changes based on your efforts.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Congratulations and well done!

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

6 years is little more than a blink of the eye in terms of most real political change timelines.

Congratulations.

6 Years

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's quite true, and especially in a post-WII environment. Compared to sixty plus years ago, politics moves in slow motion these days..

[ironed_orchid]

That is very good news, and a long time coming.